Necessary yet ignored.

Our dietitian, our psychologist and our pastor should each play  vital roles in our life and yet most of us don't place any value  on any of the three.

Eating and drinking are two of the few pleasures that life offers and life also allows us to consume the things that are pleasant and desirable to our taste buds. The fatalist, however, declare that if we eat we are going to die and if we don't eat we will just die a little earlier. Therefore, based on this it is better to enjoy the eating the food while it is killing you so eat the food that you enjoy. Either way if you don't eat then you will become malnourished and also likely develop stomach ulcers. The icing on the cake is that if you eat you will develop disease as a result of what you eat and if you don't eat then you will get sick and develop disease from not being properly nourished. Those of us who have a balanced diet stand a good chance of dying before the other two.

In order to overcome these problems we turn to our beloved dietitians.  Our dietitians are regulated healthcare professionals licensed to assess, diagnose, and treat nutritional problems. The average person goes throughout their life time without ever once consulting a dietitian and suffers no adverse consequences. We eat and drink whatever we desire and the body takes care of the rest. It is only in the rare case when there is a shortfall but more often over supply in nutrition then after a visit to the doctor we visit our friendly dietitian. The hope is to prolong life in order to eat more food. One of the few things that I recall from primary school is being taught to eat three times per day. Our stomachs are very kind and more often than not send kindly reminders to ask why is nothing coming there. Satisfying hunger and lack of energy or having energy are enough incentives to eat food. Our friendly dietitian is most welcome when there is a desire to prolong life especially when it is indulging in eating that is threatening our death.

There are available countless varieties of food and drinks to satisfy physical hunger but many fail to recognize that the mind also need to be fed. As a child I often heard this quote with reference to feeding the mind, "Garbage in, garbage out". There continues the debate as to whether the mind and the spirit differ but the agreement is that the mind need to be healthy and this lead to the reference to mental health. One philosopher describe the spirit/mental capacity not functioning as comparable to a joint out of place.

Our physical bodies and our minds does not feed on the same food although it is true that some food can and will affect our mental health. The state of our minds quite often affects the state of our bodies. The body sometimes refuses to adsorb and eliminate food because of the state of the mind. One of the terrible things that the mind does is bringing on a feeling of despair and despondency. It is at such time that we need our Psychologist to assist with overcoming those problems that originate in the mind. The severity of the problem may involve our Psychologist referring us to a Psychiatrist for medication. 

All around are things that motivate and inspire and because this it is not definite  what is the food that will motivate and or inspire a person. The things that is certain is that the mind need to be fed. Fortunately mental health issues does not arise from not feeding the mind. Probably the most potent thing that any of us posses is our minds and our institutions of higher learning plays a vital role in training and developing the mind.

One of the greatest man to walk this earth recognized the value of God's laws, ordinances and commands and equated following these as being just as necessary in life as eating food to sustain life. Religious practices appeals to a part of the psyche that is hard to define and some of the happiest people to be found are those who practices religion. Religious practitioners defy the ordinary and what makes practical sense so they are hard to explain.

In ancient religious  practices the priest approached God on behalf of the people and in turn deliver the messages from God to the people. Admittedly in our present reality most of us have pastors and not priests and the role of the pastor is difficult to explain because unlike the role of the priest the pastor appear to be more an abstract that operates in a vacuum. 

Religion, however, connects the spirit with a superior authority and the role of the pastor becomes that teaching the how of connecting with the higher authority. Pastors also serve certain social and ceremonial functions and are seen in society as the persons closest to God.